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Camp — Childish Gambino

7.5 out of 10

Click here to listen on Spotify.

Television writer, comedian, rapper, and apparent polymath Donald Glover brings a taste of his unique personality in his debut album, Camp. Once an English major at New York University, he’s become known after releasing a half-dozen EPs and mixtapes as his rapper alter-ego Childish Gambino for his nerdy, hipster-savvy similes and commentary. His excessive use of puns and literary allusions heralded by yours truly as the “rapper for English majors”.

This album lives up to the hype generated by last year’s EP and delivers a strong, albeit unbalanced, showing from the internet’s hero. He leans heavily on awkward and simplistic choruses between his oft-brilliant verses, an issue that’s developed into a growing problem since his early mixtapes. It’s not his singing voice which detracts from potentially-strong tracks, it’s the uncomfortable downshift into swooning which renders a few songs less than average.

Themes are the most inconsistent element, switching from songs about his childhood and his worry for his cousin’s future to hedonistic tracks about getting laid featuring lines like “I love pussy, I love bitches, dude I should be running PETA”. Nowhere is this more evident than between tracks “Kids” — a sentimental and nostalgic ballad about his youth — to “You See Me” — which is primarily about sex with Asian girls. Furthermore, the album’s final track ends with an extended monologue about an embarrassing childhood rejection — something completely unexpected from an album which discusses how much he loves Asian girls in nearly every song.

All in all, the cleverness throughout is enough to redeem a number of tracks, namely “Bonfire” and “Outside”, and keep one’s interest for the course of the album. Childish Gambino is unique in that one actually needs to pay attention to his lyrics (even occasionally consult Wikipedia) in order to get the full experience, and for this reason I couldn’t recommend him enough — to English majors with no aversion to vulgarity.